such a hilarious comment / mindset. he made the best selling car in the world 3 years running. neuralink is a great breakthrough. there are a string of accomplishments which individually would be the greatest thing many many people have ever done.
> he made the best selling car in the world 3 years running
Not only did Elon not found Tesla[0], but many employees have described the "babysitters" or "handlers" who are responsible for making him feel like his ideas have been implemented, so that his caprice and bluster don't interfere with the actual operation of the company.
To give him his due, he's a phenomenal manipulator of public opinion and image, and he certainly has invested a lot of his emerald-generated wealth into numerous successful ventures - but he himself is not a positive contributor to their success.
I mean, even if he isn't directly making a lot of the decisions in these companies that are doing well, it doesn't mean he doesn't play a big role in that still. He still had to pick a lot of these leaders, pay them well, keep them satisfied enough to stay there, and also give them the proper freedom to lead these companies. There are many people out there who could also manage to make these companies fail instead of grow.
I feel that a lot of people simply don't like Elon because of political reasons which are often also based on misinformed opinions. It also can't be denied that he is an intelligent person. You can hear it when he talks in interviews.
Now I think ultimately any ultra wealthy person is going to have some flaws that people can find and latch onto in order to hate someone.
I was shocked to learn recently how China is crushing it in renewables and electric cars. BYD sold 600,000 more electric cars than Tesla in 2025, becoming the world's largest EV brand. Tesla's sales have been declining since 2023, while BYD sales are rapidly growing, so the gap is likely to get even larger in 2026. This is an important trend, regardless of how one feels about Musk.
"It shouldn’t be new to anyone that population data in the poor world is bad" from the same author and same article. but cherry pick away if it makes you feel intelligent.
"They got more VC than me, therefore they are right".
You gotta have a better argument than "AI Labs are eating their own dogfood". Are there any other big software companies doing that successfully? I bet yes, and think those stories carry more weight.
lol this is capitalism buddy. food delivery exists because people want it and pay for it, you actually don't get a say at all on if it needs to 'go away'.
Tesla's marketing strategy is to have one brand with essentially only two models (the two >100k ones and the silly truck are rounding errors and hardly count), thus each individual model will tend to sell more units. BYD has more models and a bunch of sub-brands, as does VW AG and Stellantis.
No, because China is HEAVILY subsidized and given unfair market advantages. It's pretty easy to advance tech when your country will steal secrets for you and completely ignore patent protections, violating treaties in doing so.
Exactly. I don't understand why we always have to bash the US. I dislike the way China does business, and I believe the greatest error of the 20th century was moving all manufacturing there. I don't know why the government allowed companies to move everything to Asia when we could have killed two birds with one stone by moving operations to Latin America. This would keep all manufacturing on the continent and result in much less illegal migration to the US. Given the political climate of the past 20 years, China hasn't had to do much to plot the United States' demise or at least become the top economic power in 20 years or less. That if the US gets its house in order and at least 2/3 of the country rallies around, becoming, cue the music, great again (I'll see myself out, hehe).
> I don't understand why we always have to bash the US
because we still can (for now?) and it's better to introspect on how to improve oneself instead of putting everyone else down (unlike dear leader's example setting)
I think there was a time when Apple would've made a lot of sense. They have the money, and they have ambitions in the automotive area. Apple buing Tesla feels about as appropriate as Apple buying Beats by Dr. Dre, IMO.
.. However, I think Elon has made the Tesla brand so toxic to demographics which are important to Apple, so I don't think an acquisition makes sense anymore.
Apple buying Tesla seems as weird as Sony buying Mazda though. Apple is just not a car company — they're a consumer electronic company (that are, if anything, moving hard into services).
I think Apple has had aspirations to become a car company. There were all those years of rumours about the Apple car project, and they've done a lot of work with car companies for Car Play. Their latest iteration of Car Play aims to completely take over things everything including the instrument panel, if I understood correctly. I don't think Sony has similar ties to the car industry?
Correct, but they're not profitable, rely on quickly depreciating capital assets and loads of tech employees to maintain their services, so it's hard for me to believe that there's a sustainable business here for them.
And like, if anyone's gonna win it should be Google because of their ability to push capital into this for a long time, their world class infrastructure and their cost advantage by having their chips in house. But I have faith in their ability to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
such a hilarious comment / mindset. he made the best selling car in the world 3 years running. neuralink is a great breakthrough. there are a string of accomplishments which individually would be the greatest thing many many people have ever done.
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